The book My way of knowledge – Expedition into the Abyss of alienation (Heiko Volkmer, published by Materialverlag) critically looks into questions and phenomenons that unfold when dealing with the meaning of work in our society. In doing so, three poles correspond with each other: the subjective thoughts of the author who questions his decision to study at an art school, the fictional biography of a bookbinder who finds himself back in professional orientation and various works of the humanities, such as by Karl Marx, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel or Siegfried Kracauer.

In the film Bookbiographies, the book´s content is viewed and examined using the example of the book industry. The film follows the biography of the book through the multifaceted stages of book production and thereby encounters various people who talk about their work, work attitude and life story. Those are for example the high-tech timber harvesting, the author in the half-light of his study, the independent publisher, the skilled bookseller in a call-center and a philosophy professor in his second-hand bookshop. In addition, the development of the book My path of knowledge is illustrated as a concrete example of book manufacturing.

The conclusions provided by the book are in a dialogue with the individual statements of the protagonists, while both often happen to be surprisingly contiguous to one another. It is shown to what extend it is possible to apply historical knowledge to current circumstances. The reality of each protagonist demonstrates what these circumstances can be, with work being the main focus ‒ as it is in most peoples daily life.